Altered graphic used to claim ABP projected TMC win in Bengal’s Cooch Behar

What is the claim?

Just days before the Indian general elections commenced on Friday, April 19, 2024, a graphic began circulating on social media. This graphic claimed that the ABP C-Voter survey predicted a Lok Sabha poll victory for the Trinamool Congress (TMC) party, currently in power in West Bengal, specifically in the Cooch Behar constituency.

The viral graphic features Suman De, an anchor for the Bengali news channel ABP Ananda, discussing the statistics for the Cooch Behar constituency. The survey appears to predict that TMC candidate Jagadish Chandra Basunia is poised to win the polls. This post was widely shared on Facebook with the caption, "Trinamool's roar signals the end of opposition in Bengal" (translated from Bengali). Archived versions of similar posts can be found here, here, here, and here.

Screenshots of the viral posts. (Source: Facebook/Modified by Logically Facts)

In anticipation of the elections, numerous Indian media outlets and research institutions released pre-election surveys and forecasts for the Lok Sabha election results. ABP, in collaboration with the Indian polling agency CVoter, has also issued several reports based on their survey.

However, our investigation revealed that the claim is false. The shared graphic has been manipulated to falsely suggest that the survey predicted a TMC victory in Cooch Behar. In reality, the ABP C-Voter survey projected that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate is likely to win in this constituency.

How did we find the source?

We hypothesized that the graphic originated from one of the debates hosted by news anchor Suman De. Our search confirmed that the graphic was taken from a debate on the ABP opinion poll survey. This show was live-streamed on April 12 and is available on YouTube under the title "C Voter Opinion Poll (Part 2): Who is the magic in Jadavpur? What about the 'North' of Kolkata? Who is the hit in Ghatal?"

The show, which lasted 1 hour and 50 minutes, featured the anchor discussing potential winners in several constituencies based on survey data, alongside a panel of experts. At the 58-minute and 50-second mark, De discusses the survey data for the Cooch Behar constituency.

He explains that there are four candidates, with TMC candidate Basunia and BJP candidate Nisith Pramanik in a tight race. A swing of three percent votes could potentially change the results. However, he concludes by saying that if there is no swing, data collected by CVoter until April 5 indicates that BJP candidate Pramanik is likely to win the seat.

The original graphic data, visible at the 59:40-minute mark, features both Pramanik and Basunia. However, we found no graphic in the segment projecting Basunia as the likely winner.

Comparison between the fake graphic and the original graphic. (Source: Facebook/YouTube/Modified by Logically Facts)

Later, the screen displays Pramanik as the probable victor in the battle for Cooch Behar.

Screenshot from the ABP survey that predicts Nisith Pramanik as the winner. (Source: YouTube/Screenshot)

It is evident that the Bengali text indicating 'Likely winner' is intended for Pramanik, and the cutout of the TMC candidate from the previous visual has been combined with this text to falsely suggest that the survey predicted a win for Basunia.

ABP Ananda also released a news report clarifying that the viral graphic is fake. The report stated that the ABP C-Voter survey predicted that BJP candidate Pramanik, not Basunia, is likely to win from Cooch Behar.

Cooch Behar will vote in the first phase of the seven-phase Lok Sabha elections. The constituency witnessed the death of four people in a firing allegedly carried out by central forces at Sitalkuchi during the 2021 West Bengal Assembly elections, an issue that the TMC has highlighted in the current poll campaign.

In the 2021 Assembly polls, Cooch Behar was a BJP stronghold, with the party winning five of the seven segments. The party also won the seat in the 2019 general elections.

The verdict

A fabricated graphic has been circulated online, falsely claiming that an ABP C-Voter survey has projected a TMC victory in Bengal’s Cooch Behar constituency in the Lok Sabha polls. The viral graphic is inaccurate, as the ABP survey actually projected that the BJP is likely to win that seat.